This invention relates to games and more particularly to games with playing pieces that may be moved in secrecy and have a light source which becomes energized or illuminated to signal or reveal the location of other movable but hidden playing pieces.
Games of stealth and deception have been played for some time. The games "Stratego" and "Battleship" have recently been commercially successful, both having elements designed to make play more exciting through hidden playing pieces or by concealing the identity of the playing pieces. The history of games with hidden movement extends back at least to the 19th century when war games played at military institutions would involve two teams of players out of sight of one another. A third group would serve as umpires, noting where each side moved their playing pieces and informing both sides when one or more of their playing pieces would be in sight of their opponents. This type of play has been used by civilian wargamers, and it currently has been adapted for use with a computer as the umpire. This type of play entails either a third party as umpire for a game in which he or she cannot participate, or the employment of expensive computing equipment.
A second method of playing games of hidden movement involves the use of opaque containers, often matchboxes, that represent spaces on a map. Chits representing playing pieces are moved by players from box to box, simulating movement from space to space. When a player finds an opponent's chit in a box he intended to move a chit into, he can then tell his opponent he has found one of his units (or playing pieces). This form of play allows only one player to move at a time, and it is inconvenient since a player cannot see where his chits are and must therefore keep a separate record.
Also, there have been wargames designed with special rules to allow hidden movement and enable simultaneous movement of playing pieces. These make board wargames more realistic, but result in complex rules and record keeping, and correspondingly decrease the "playability" of the game.
There have been several electrically operated game boards designed that permit some form of hidden movement game to be played, though most were not originally designed for that purpose. These earlier designs have been primarily meant to play "Battleship", a popular children's game normally played with paper and pencil.
Game boards designed to play "Battleship" remove the need to draw ships on paper and for players to call their "shots" and respond as to whether their "ships" have been "hit" or "missed". These "Battleship" game boards and other similar position matching games are designed for the placement of target pieces at the start of a game that are then "fired" upon one at a time. If a hit is scored, an electrical circuit is completed through the target and the device used to indicate shots. Though there may be multiple targets, there is only one signaling device that lights or buzzes when a hit is scored on an opponent's ship. This central signal still requires players to record where they have "hit" or "missed", and which of their own ships have been hit. Games of this type are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,365,811, 3,640,536 and 3,194,560.
A variant of this design is a game in which there are no fixed targets such as ships, but in which an electrical circuit is completed when pieces from both sides occupy the same space on their respective game boards, therefore energizing a central signaling device. Such a game is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,473,808, 4,231,577 and 3,537,708. In these games, the playing pieces must still be moved one at a time due to the central signaling device. If more than one "hit" were to be scored in one turn, it would be impossible to know which move resulted in the "hit". A similar game design is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,799,505, 2,442,014, 2,197,306, 1,232,133 and 2,139,860.
A third form of position matching game has a signaling device, normally a light, for each playing piece that represents a target, or a light for each space on the two game boards. One game board apparatus, designed for a hidden word game, uses small light bulbs that are screwed into sockets representing letters. These sockets are linked to sockets on the opponent's game board on a letter for letter basis. The players try to duplicate their opponent's placement of bulbs, thus finding the letters in the opponent's hidden word and enabling them to guess the word before their hidden word is similarly puzzled out. Games of this type are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,905,473, 3,887,189 and 3,376,041.
While all these designs allow the playing of pattern matching games and "Battleship", they have limitations in being adaptable to other types of games. The games that rely on a central signal allow only one playing piece to be moved per turn per side. The group of games with multiple light positions or pieces would allow multiple pieces to be moved per turn, though they are not designed for this type of play. However, changing the position of the playing pieces in these games is not a direct or easy process, nor are there special types of playing pieces to add interest to game play. In this game design, the movement of playing pieces is kept simple and straight forward so game play can proceed quickly. The main limitation of other game boards that is overcome by this design is that when contact occurs between playing pieces of opposing players in these games, both players immediately become aware of it. Thus, players know which of their playing pieces have been discovered and which remain hidden. This limits the uncertainty that is possible in a game of hidden movement. Since uncertainty of an opponent's intentions and his knowledge about the situation is one of the main elements of a hidden movement game, it would make for a better game if more uncertainty is introduced. If both sides cannot be sure of what is known about the position of their playing pieces, and also are able to secretly discover some of their opponent's playing pieces, much more uncertainty can be generated in a game. Besides adding uncertainty this allows better simulations of historic situations where complete knowledge of an opponent was not possible. Also, the ability of players to secretly locate opponent's playing pieces adds the dimension of intelligence gathering to game play.